Orbiting the Red Planet

I'm through to the second round of the Red Planet Prize!

What a great surprise it was when the email came, just as I was queueing to pay for a falafel and houmous wrap in Tesco!

This is the third time I've entered the Red Planet Prize, the second with that script, and I'm absolutely over the moon to get to round two for the first time.

Congratulations and good luck to everyone who got through to round two. If you didn't get through this time then don't give up, have a read of these posts...

Jason Arnopp - Your Script Is Not A Lottery Ticket

Phill Barron - Ivory Tower

Script Punk - Red Planet Prize - What's Next?

I'd better get back to work!

Happy be your Christmas!

Happy Christmas everyone.

I hope you have a fabulous break and a prosperous 2012.

With love always,

Rob.

xxx

The Road to the Red Planet

This update is late, sorry. I meant to do a 'What did I learn from NaNoWriMo' type post last week but time has rather got away from me. I will try and do something like that soon but in the meantime I'll just say that it was a really good exercise, got me in to a nice (if intense) routine and I'm happy to have met the traditional target. I hoped initially to write 60k words rather than 50k, and on learning of the Heartlands opportunity I amended this to trying to finish a week early, but due to a family emergency type situation I lost a few days and failed both of those self-imposed targets.

Although it was fun to write I can't see me ever going back to revise the book. It will require a lot of work to make it into a sellable, or even readable, manuscript and the potential for the market is teeny-tiny. Still, the exercise was the important thing. I didn't really set out to create something sellable, just to test myself. On the other hand I could see myself harvesting the plot for a feature script one day...

I definitely want to write another novel, whether I will leave that until next November or get underway sooner I don't know. Having shown myself that hey, I can do this! I think I would like to set a more demanding wordcount target for a fully prepared novel intended for publication.

No sooner had I wandered, dazed and confused, over the NaNoWriMo finish line I was thrown head first into revisiting a bottom(top?)-draw script which I felt was the most appropriate thing I had to enter into the BBC's excellent Heartlands opportunity. It's kind of funny really as I have never known quite what to do with that script but it seemed perfect for Heartlands, or that's my feeling. Fingers crossed they have a similar view at the Beeb. In any case I had a day or two to work that up and send it in. It was pretty rushed but hopefully I managed to make it shine. I genuinely like the script. Actually, while rereading it, I laughed out loud at a couple of lines. I hope that's a sign that the script is good and not a sign that I've lost all perspective on my own work!

The Heartlands shortlist will be announced on Tuesday. Good luck to all.

So now it's all about the Red Planet Prize again. This time I'm going to write something from scratch, specifically for Red Planet. In previous years I've sent in what I thought was my most suitable existing script (as you may remember they passed on what is still my favourite effort last time, sadface). I don't suppose it really makes any difference but I have some superstitious idea that it will infuse each word with extra special Red Planet-ness that will make it a winner, fingers crossed.

Obviously I won't say too much about the script, mainly because I'm not commited yet, I'm still kicking around a couple of ideas, but I'm very excited about writing a new script.

The Red Planet deadline is January 16th.

It's the Final Countdown

Greetings Carbon-based units,

It doesn't look likely that I'll meet my self-imposed target of finishing the novel today. It's a bit of a cliché but real life has caught up with me in a sudden and upsetting way this week which meant that work ground to a halt Wednesday and Thursday.

I guess there's a chance that I might write the last 9,000 or so words tonight but as I will be away from home for at least part of the weekend it's far more likely that I will finish early next week. There is still plenty of time before the official deadline of November 30th, after all. I was hoping to be able to concentrate exclusively on my Heartlands entry all next week but I do have a couple of days booked off from the day job for that purpose so I'm sure I will still be able to catch up.

If this were a film then we'd be at the part where you keep cutting between the clicking countdown and our hero's herculean efforts to beat it...